Trunk

Impressive. It's almost like every story about this stuff is unbelievable. The most-helpful-rated review generated a lot of discussion (coratid arterial blockage, + surprise: resolve his Peyronie's disease caused by scar tissue in the penis); I read the whole thing. Pretty amazing, interesting. One person said that a friend of theirs had a scar from childhood that gradually disappeared!, friggin' a!! It's at least being claimed that it slowly eats away at any dead tissue (scar tissue being just one kind, also arterial plaque) including mucous (which is a major factor in chronic disease in Ch. medicine). One woman said that she had a blockage in her fallopian tube that resolved and what came out looked just like the surgically removed blockages that she looked up online. All really interesting. Seems like it could be good for *any* kind of chronic stagnation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtngZIBNBbE

Pretty interesting reviews on amazon http://www.amazon.com/Doctors-Best-Potency-Serrapeptase-90-Count/dp/B003QW3GCI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418011869&sr=8-1&keywords=Serrapeptase

I think that there are a lot of methods that use hands and/or spheres. (Ex, some long while back I think I posted a SFQ method in the KYMQ thread. Also, various other I've either made up or have heard/seen from other teachers.) One of the things I like about Sifu Matsuo's KYMQ presentation are the specific key tips that he gives along the way that got the whole thing working for me, *any*thing w/ the hands and spheres, that I just get so much more out of the other variations that I've tried. Some while back I was hanging out w/ a friend (who is healthy and physically active but doesn't have much qigong experience) in my back yard and I led him through just the most basic creation of the sphere and most simple way of working with it (using Matsuo's tips). It kind of freaked him out because immediately he felt something and he hadn't expected that he would feel anything. And, ime, he wasn't feeling just anything, he was feeling some of the right key things that get this sort of practice to work beneficially. Have fun exploring. Thanks for the link.

(I only read the quote in the orig post, not the article, but...) 1st-world spirituality, yikes.

I have the opposite: inhibited flow on the left. Mine is due to various things that occurred early in life. It goes everywhere, but there is special alchemy that occurs in the central channel if you know some on how to get that to happen. The general situation is that most people have some stubborn block/s somewhere. Part of cultivation is a long term approach to "opening the tissues and channels", various bodywork and body-wisdom-disciplines. For me, I've found: - self-acupressure - acupuncture (with a doctor that studied the Japanese system of acupuncture by Kiiko Matsumoto, which I find to be *way* more effective than the usual) - various of Sifu Matsuo's practices (bagua and other), see link in my signature - explored lots of stuff over a long period of time Pace yourself, go gentle w/ your kundalini situation, and settle in for the long haul. - Trunk

I'd not heard of the Pangu set... link?

saw this recently: Harvard Unveils MRI Study re: Meditation re-builds brain's gray matter in 8 weeks

I wanted to open up the topic of mystical/qigong progression and virtue in action, character ... which I'm calling "Tao" and "te" (maybe not *exactly* the classical use of those but pretty close). Aka, "wisdom" and "virtue". The myth is that "enlightened people are perfect in virtue" and "as I become more enlightened, my character flaws will clear up" ... simplistic ideas that mystical progression and virtue progress in sync, which most of us who've been around even a little recognize isn't true. There've been plenty of teachers (even in the last few decades) who are *extremely* advanced mystically and misbehave otherwise, it's basically cliche. (I don't want to spend hardly any space in this thread pointing fingers at "flawed teachers"; that's not the topic here ... more just the human process.) And certainly in my own practice, I'm really glad to engage in mystical practice and feel it is worth while in it's own sake, and that continues to deepen ... but it certainly has not been any magic wand in making me a perfect human being, lol. How do you navigate, integrate, Tao and te? Do you find that they are functionally connected? ... a lot? ... only a little? Throwing the topic open for discussion.

a short clip from the beginning of Sifu Matsuo's tea cup video that I reviewed/quoted above: p.s. In the tea cups and other videos, I've found Sifu Matsuo to provide exceptionally functional tips. In tea cups, it got my spine to do whaaaa?? - gah!, in a way that has become fun and fluent. From KYMQ, anything that I now do with my hands and/or feet, and anything to do with a sphere: huge change. Circle walking, etc. (Stopping as I've started to rant.) cheers & happy holidays, Trunk

Thanks for the many and varied excellent replies. Too many good quotes to list. Probably most of us agree that mystical immersion and virtue are at least related, though perhaps not always as in-sync as we'd like or hope. Where my attention goes next is "mechanics and methods". How do each of us develop virtue?, if we've found practices that result in improved virtue the mechanics on how that was accomplished? Probably I could get something out of simply re-reading the thread from my slightly-shifted new perspective.

Started a thread on the topic http://thetaobums.com/topic/36935-mystical-progression-tao-and-virtue-character-te/

IntuitiveWanderer, The relationship of "wisdom" (absolute truth, mystical experience, merging with the One, Tao) and "virtue" (correct action, character, Te) is an interesting topic. The typical myth (that in my observation is untrue) that a student initially hears is that mystical immersion and virtue/character procede in sync. It's clearly not that simple. We tend to be more of a mess than that. Welcome, Trunk

Yup. There've been various teachers in the last several decades who could do miraculous things. Surprisingly, it doesn't get them much attention from either the scientific community nor hardly in attracting students. ... or they attract kinds of attention they didn't want, and so stop.

DGS's "13 Elbows" dvd are movements that, on the outside are elbow strikes but on the inside are different ways to articulate the shoulder blades. Opens up energetics / blood flow / something I'm not sure what - in really good feeling ways, lol.

I've been watching this some, lately. They've really done a pretty good job at integrating the traditional fighting styles with the animation n' 'bending' stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYJc0ZMWc68

Many good replies, fun to read. I'd say that any body-wisdom-discipline (hatha yoga, pilates, tai chi, bagua, etc) would, over time, show up deeply in the quality of attack in drumming. One of my xing yi brothers is a drummer and for sure it influences his drumming. Exercise and body-work in general could be very interesting vis-a-vis drumming, over time. Just resting into places in your body and letting the drumming come from there is a good one. I'd also say that there's a balance of training for perfect form vs training spontenaity. I went through a phase on guitar where I was banging away on a simple blues progression ... with just any rhythm that my body presented at the time. They were pretty long sessions that were kind of musical-opening ~ body-therapy sessions. This went on for at least a couple of months. A lot of roughness came out and afterwards I was more smooth and fluid.

These two are used in western schools of Chinese medicine. I have them both, rather excellent. Bensky's Chinsese Herbal Materia Medica (single herbs) Chinese Herbal Formulas & Strategies (formulas)

Fun watching the Legend of Korra https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQO59b-SjY4

The quoted-above dialog points out the fact that those criteria are too largely a matter of opinion. All a moderator would have to say is, "it doesn't make sense to me" or something only a very small step away from "that's just not the way I see it, at all". It's a nice idea/motive/aesthetic, that it'd be great to have more clear communication from each person, but unworkable to enforce / organize upon via management action. Where it needs to come from, is from each person, unforced.

I find that a bit (even a little bit) of movement warm-up before still standing is helpful: - joint rotations - something for the spine - body weight squats

Not uncommon for *extraordinary* teachers to only be able to gather not/barely enough students to cover costs. I've seen a couple of Taoist teachers teach out of their homes. Sometimes just in the living room, sometimes the back yard is especially set up for it, once a studio added onto a small house, converted room. I think that the meet-up model is interesting, where the organizer is minimally more powerful than the participants, more like a support group with a facilitator.

Reflecting some on several teachers I've studied with: 1. They were very practice oriented: Just do the practices, experience whatever results for yourself. ... following from the above emphasis, 2. They didn't care much what the students believed; not a belief driven program. 3. They carefully avoided giving any advice to students re: what to do in their lives. "Your life is your own battle." I very much appreciated this format, found it freeing and workable. And it disinvolved the teachers from potentially endless entanglements.

Is there an online article outlining the typical sequence of major bagua skills/forms (mother palm, linking palm, etc)?

Sensible possibility. And cordecyps is a pretty safe herb. It tonifys both yin and yang, so it is balanced, and it has a slight anti-microbial effect.